For this week’s Illustration Friday, “Fast” I thought I’d do a set of quick sketches.

Click on any image to see a larger version. Everyone knows cheetahs are the fastest land animals:

According to wisegeek, cheetahs run up to 70 mph. I run about 0.70 miles per hour on a good day.

The fastest water animal, I had to look up.

This is a sailfish, which I had heard of but had never really thought about much. They’re actually pretty cool looking, like a dinosaur mixed with a swordfish. Like the cheetah, sailfish travel 70 mph, so in a triathlon I suppose they’d be about evenly matched. Until they got to the biking portion, because everyone knows fish can’t ride bikes.

Finally, the fastest animal of the air is the aptly named Sir Not Appearing in this Film. Wait. I mean the aptly named swift.

Swifts fly through the air at 106 mph, making them the fastest animal in the world (probably not great in the triathlon though).

I’m pretty happy with how the sailfish and the swifts turned out. I got the cutout effect by reverse selecting the subjects, and darkening the paper grain to add in a more noticable texture. The cheetah is ok, but I always have a tough time with cats for some reason. This one looks a bit like a monkey or a hyena, but as my cats go, it’s acceptable.